Ever wonder how I come up with some of the names of the major (and minor) characters in the TCOTU series?

Believe it or not, Heskan’s last name started out as his first name in the early days of Book 1! The name itself originated with a tabletop RPG character I had made and was especially fond of. Then I realized that the name “Heskan” would be rarely used in the book since I refer to most characters in narration by their last name. So, after the switch to Heskan being his last name, I looked for a first name that I couldn’t identify with another literary character. That took longer than you’d think, before finally settling on Garrett.

Lombardi is a strange one. I am a big fan of the computer game, XCOM, dating back to the 90’s. When XCOM: Enemy Unknown was released a year or two ago, I had a lot of fun playing it. One of the hallmarks of the game is its perma-death for the soldiers you use during play to investigate alien crash sites, etc. During a run through, my best soldier was the randomly assigned name Isabella Lombardi and I thought that name would make a great character’s name in my series. Then I realized the connections she might have to Selvaggio and devised the whole New Roma star system’s division mini-plot. It’s strange how such a small thing evolved into such a large part of the story.